Beyond Chutzpah: US Charges Venezuela with Nacro-Terrorism
By Roger D. Harris | Dissident Voice | March 29, 2020
According to the parable, the ungrateful son takes out a life insurance policy on his parents, murders them to collect, and is caught and found guilty. At his sentencing, the judge asks if he has anything to say on his behalf. The son replies: “Have mercy upon me because I am an orphan.” That’s chutzpah.
US Attorney General Barr’s indictments on March 26 against the government of Venezuela for narco-terrorism go beyond chutzpah. For starters, William P. Barr was chief counsel for the CIA airline Southern Air Transport implicated in the 1980s for running illicit drugs and related narco-terrorism during Iran-Contra.
The US charges of drug trafficking against Venezuela are the height of hypocrisy. The world’s leading source of heroin is US-occupied Afghanistan; the US is the world’s largest cocaine market.
The president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH), is the latest in a line of corrupt presidents since the 2009 US-backed coup there. JOH was identified as an unindicted co-conspirator in October by a US federal court for smuggling multi-million dollars’ worth of cocaine into the US.
Colombia is the chief regional US client state, distinguished by being the largest recipient of US military aid in the hemisphere. Hillary Clinton called Plan Colombia a model for Latin America. Yet this model is the planet’s largest supplier of illicit cocaine. And that’s only scratching the surface of the US’s history of complicity in international narcotrafficking.
The false criminal charges by the US government against fourteen high-ranking Venezuelan officials are for alleged involvement in international drug trafficking. The US government has, in effect, put a $15 million bounty on Venezuelan President Maduro and bounties of $10 million each for the head of the National Constituent Assembly and other leading officials and former officials.
Thirty years ago, the US posted a $1 million reward on the head of Manuel Noriega, then president of Panama, on charges of narcotrafficking. Noriega had long been a US security asset assisting in the US’s dirty Contra war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Noriega had also used his US patronage to consolidate his rule in Panama as well as his ties with Colombian drug cartels. However, toward the end of his tenure, Noriega did not demonstrate a sufficient level of servility to his US handlers and was deposed in the US invasion of Panama in 1989, taking the lives of many uncounted civilians.
As RT warns: “The US indictment of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his subordinates on narcotrafficking charges echoes the rationale used to invade Panama and kidnap its leader.” Unlike the Noriega case, where the Panamanian president was convicted of massive drug trafficking with the knowledge and full protection of the CIA and other US security agencies, the US lacks evidence against the Venezuelans.
The US claims that Venezuelan officials are conspiring to “flood the United States with cocaine” are thoroughly groundless. Even the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a Washington-based think tank that supports regime change for Venezuela, found in a recent detailed report using the US government’s own data that the facts do not support such bogus claims.
The authoritative US interagency Consolidated Counterdrug Database reports, in fact, that 93% of US-bound cocaine is trafficked through western Caribbean and eastern Pacific routes, not through Venezuela’s eastern Caribbean coast. Over six times as much cocaine flowed through the US-allied Guatemala than Venezuela in 2018.
Yes, some illicit drugs flow through Venezuela – a minor amount compared to those emanating from US client states – but the culprits are criminal gangs that the very indicted officials are fighting. The coca is grown and manufactured into cocaine in neighboring Colombia, not Venezuela. While supporting US government actions to undermine Venezuelan state institutions, WOLA recognizes: “Venezuela’s state institutions have deteriorated… In this environment, armed groups and organized criminal structures, including drug trafficking groups, have thrived.”
Yet WOLA’s conclusion is: “US government data suggests that, despite these challenges, Venezuela is not a primary transit country for US-bound cocaine. US policy toward Venezuela should be predicated on a realistic understanding of the transnational drug trade.”
The US indictments against the government of Venezuela are a ramping up of a policy of regime change. Ever since Hugo Chávez was elected president of Venezuela in 1998 and launched the Bolivarian Revolution, the hostile US government has floated consistently unsubstantiated accusations of narcotrafficking.
More recently the Trump administration has sought to replace the democratically elected president of Venezuela with a US-chosen and groomed security asset. Juan Guaidó, the man anointed by Trump to be president of Venezuela, had never run for the presidency nor served as president and was unknown to 81% of the Venezuelan population at the time of his self-declaration as president. Besides these dubious qualifications, Guaidó collaborated with the right-wing Colombian drug cartel and paramilitary group known as Los Rastrojos and even posed for pictures with some of their operatives, which were posted on Twitter.
The ever-tightening unilateral coercive measures on Venezuela by the US have created a blockade, costing Venezuela over 100,000 lives. Sanctions are not an alternative to war but an economic form of warfare and just as deadly. As such, unilateral economic sanctions are an explicit violation of international law under the charters of the United Nations and the Organization of American States and even under US law.
Unfortunately, Venezuela is not alone. The rogue empire’s sanctions now blight a third of the world’s population in 39 countries.
This latest escalation of the US hybrid war against Venezuela takes place within the context of the global coronavirus pandemic, which the US empire sees as an opportunity to further attack the Venezuelan people made more vulnerable by the health crisis. Indeed, the US State Department has declared “Maximum-pressure March” against Venezuela. In service of the empire, Twitter has closed the accounts of the Venezuelan ministries of health, science, education, and housing.
Meanwhile, Cuba, Russia, and China are all materially supporting the Maduro government’s successful efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19 in Venezuela. In contrast to this internationalist solidarity, the US is in the midst to the largest war games in 25 years, Defend Europe 20, in contravention of World Health Organization quarantine protocols.
Words cannot sufficiently describe the inhumane perfidy of the US empire’s response to the pandemic. This should be a time for the US government to:
- Drop the unsupported indictments against President Maduro and other Venezuelan officials.
- Lift the inhumane and illegal sanctions on Venezuela so that Venezuela can purchase medicines and equipment to better fight the coronavirus pandemic.
- Restore normal relations with Venezuela based on respect for national sovereignty.
Roger D. Harris is with the Task Force on the Americas, a human rights group working in solidarity with social justice movements in Latin America and the Caribbean since 1985.
Black Swan author Taleb urges UK to let Branson’s airline go bust
RT | March 29, 2020
Famed author and statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb has trained his sights on billionaire Richard Branson, urging the UK government to let the airline owned by the “tax refugee” to go bankrupt.
Branson has had a torrid fortnight, drawing the ire of politicians of all stripes for putting all Virgin Atlantic staff on unpaid leave because the carrier has been walloped by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The tycoon has led the calls for a state-sponsored bailout of the aviation sector, but plans to use the funds to cover fixed costs, rather than pay its staff.
Taleb wrote The Black Swan, which is widely touted as one of the most influential books of the century. His writings give his words extra weight in the current global situation as they focus on the extraordinary impact of rare events.
The risk analyst has given short shrift to the suggestion of bailouts for airlines, saying that the industry was hugely influential in preventing governments from calling a halt to flights from China as the outbreak spread in the Asian country.
However, the author reserved his most scathing analysis for Branson, whom he dubbed a “tax refugee” who “walks around virtue-faking with [the] TED [and] Davos crowd.”
“He lives in the British Virgin Islands and since the UK has no worldwide taxation, [he] pays no taxes. Yet wants the UK taxpayer’s backstop,” Taleb said, in a blistering tweet. “Let him go bust. Planes will fly with new owners!”
Virgin Atlantic has been particularly badly hit by the Covid-19 crisis as it does not have the cash reserves of some of its larger competitors. It reportedly approached the UK government and the Rothschild investment bank, who are said to be handling negotiations, for a package worth hundreds of millions of pounds in loans and guarantees.
Turkish forces, allied militants cut off drinking water to Syria’s Hasakah, environs
Press TV – March 29, 2020
Turkish forces and allied Takfiri militants have once again cut off drinking water supply to people in Syria’s northeastern city of Hasakah and surrounding areas, only a few days after the Damascus government complained to the United Nations and the Security Council over the issue.
Director General of Hasakah Water Company, Mahmoud al-Ukla, told Syria’s official news agency SANA in a statement on Sunday that the Turkish troops and their allies stopped the pumping of water from the Allouk water station at 10 p.m. local time (1900 GMT) last night, and have refused to reverse their decision.
He emphasized that the measure has deprived up to a million people in the Hasakah region of the essential resource.
Ukla then described the cut in water supply to the Hasakah region as a blatant violation of human rights, an appalling crime against the population of Hasakah, and an act in a way that increases the sufferings of the locals.
Allouk water station is located near the border town of Ra’s al-Ayn, which the Turkish troops and their allied militants seized in October 2019 during the so-called Peace Spring Operation.
“Turkish occupation forces and affiliated terrorists cut off drinking water from Allouk water station and feeding wells deliberately and systematically, depriving more than 600,000 Syrian citizens, mostly women and children, from drinking water,” the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates said in identical letters sent to United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and the rotating President of the UN Security Council Zhang Jun on Thursday.
The Syrian ministry noted that the Turkish forces shelled the water station during their cross-border military operation last October, putting it out of service.
Syrian officials, accordingly, briefed the UN Security Council on February 27, informing the international body of a water outage in Hasakah.
“But unfortunately the Security Council, its General Secretariat or relevant international organizations failed to condemn the Turkish forces’ bombing of such a critical civilian facility and their use of water as a weapon against civilians,” the letters pointed out.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry finally called on the Security Council to condemn the crimes being perpetrated by Turkish soldiers, and obligate Ankara to stop its violation of the international law and humanitarian principles, besides its support for terrorist groups wreaking havoc inside Syria.
Turkey has beefed up its military presence in Syria’s northwestern province of Idlib, the last militant bastion in a nine-year foreign-backed war, where several anti-Damascus terrorist outfits receive Turkey’s support in their persisting militancy against the Syrian government.
Last week, a United Nations official said interruption to the key water station in Syria’s northeast puts thousands of lives at risk as efforts ramp up to stop the outbreak of the novel coronavirus there.
UNICEF Representative in Syria Fran Equiza said the interruption “during the current efforts to curb the spread of the coronavirus disease puts children and families at unacceptable risk.”
He underlined that the station is the main source of water for around 460,000 people in Hasakah city, the town of Tal Tamer as well as al-Hol and Areesha camps.
The Syrian government has applied a series of measures, as cases of COVID-19 infection have been found in the war-ravaged Arab country.
The measures include suspending schools, universities, as well as some ministries and closing marketplaces and restaurants.
The government also stopped public transportations nationwide.
Russia Concerned by Proximity of US Bioweapon Labs Amid Outbreak – Source
© CC BY 2.0 / PublicDomainPictures / 17907 images
Sputnik – 29.03.2020
MOSCOW – Russia is concerned by how close Pentagon-funded biological warfare labs are to its borders at the same time as it battles the coronavirus, a Foreign Ministry source told reporters on Sunday.
The official slammed US authorities for blaming China for the COVID-19 pandemic and manipulating its data on the virus, and in turn, accused the United States of spinning the global health crisis into political attacks.
“We do have questions for the US. It would be nice to hear its justification for placing so many labs near Russia and China, instead of its playing propaganda games with the coronavirus”, the official said.
He admitted that Russia had no credible information on a US role in the emergence of the deadly virus, which was first reported in China last December, but said globalisation made transmission of viral diseases “a matter of hours”.
“Thus, the accusatory tone of remarks directed against China from Washington is outright baffling”, the official said, adding that the source of the virus was yet to be discovered.
China hit back at the United States this month, after getting a grip on the epidemic, saying that US military personnel might have introduced the new coronavirus to Wuhan during the 2019 Military World Games in October.
A Russian firewall for Venezuela against US sanctions
By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | March 29, 2020
The optics of the Russian oil leviathan Rosneft’s decision to sell its subsidiary Rosneft Trading SA and sell all its assets in Venezuela after the US Treasury sanctioned its trading arm two weeks ago as part of Washington’s regime change project to oust president Nicolás Maduro, may not look good to the uninformed outside observer.
It may appear, prima facie, that Russia is ditching Maduro and succumbing to US president Donald Trump’s latest act of weaponisation of sanctions against the Venezuelan government. At least, that was how the BBC Radio’s morning bulletin today projected the development.
But as one digs deeper, it emerges, on the contrary, that the Kremlin is having the last laugh. What Russia is doing is, funnily enough, borrowing from the US diplomatic toolbox — the equivalent of what the US does constantly in its war on terrorism, that is, whenever a terrorist group that Washington sponsors gets exposed on the battlefield, it gets promptly rebranded and reappears as a new avatar, and life moves on.
So, what is happening needs to be understood as follows: Rosneft is disengaging from its trading arm Rosneft Trading SA, the Geneva-based trading subsidiary, in a deliberate ploy to create a firewall against potential US sanctions in future.
This is important for preserving Rosneft’s global operations — Rosneft accounts for about 6 per cent of global oil production — which might otherwise be risking the US sanctions in the downstream.
Rosneft is acting with prudence since, although Rosneft is majority-owned by the Kremlin, it is listed in London, and counts BP and the Qatari sovereign wealth fund as large minority shareholders.
A Rosneft spokesman has ben quoted as saying, “As a public international company, we have made a decision in the interests of our shareholders in the context of the situation that has objectively developed. Now we have the right to expect from American regulators to fulfil their publicly given promises.” The last reference is to statements from the US that sanctions against its trading arm would be removed if Rosneft wound down its Venezuelan business.
Interestingly, an unnamed company owned entirely by the Kremlin will be buying the Rosneft subsidiary and its oil services and trading operations in Venezuela. The deal between Rosneft (headed by Igor Sechin) and the Kremlin (headed by Vladimir Putin) boils down to the latter now directly taking over assets in Venezuela amounting to more than 80m tonnes in oil reserves and oil production of 66,500 barrels a day via five joint ventures with PDVSA, Venezuela’s state oil company.
A Rosneft subsidiary will receive 9.6 per cent of the company’s stock from the Kremlin in exchange for the assets. That leaves with Trump an only remaining option of sanctioning the Kremlin itself if he wants to punish Maduro.
Moscow honed this innovative technique to outwit Trump’s sanctions earlier also in Venezuela when it rebranded a joint-Russian/Venezuelan bank facing US sanctions with the Russian joint-venture partners — VTB and Gazprombank —transferring their shares to the Russian government.
Clearly, the deal between Rosneft and the Kremlin (read between Sechin and Putin — who are of course longstanding associates in Russian politics through thick and thin — gives an unambiguous signal that Moscow is in Venezuela for the long haul, no matter what it takes.
The geopolitical implications are hugely consequential for the future of the Maduro government, enhancing Russia’s overall standing in the western hemisphere and highlighting the limits to US hegemony in its own backyard. (Isn’t it Ukraine in reverse order?) The Latin American countries (and China) will be closely watching, too.
Sechin, a former KGB officer himself, has been a key figure in the Kremlin hierarchy who choreographed and founded Moscow’s close relationship with Caracas. He had an exceptionally warm personal friendship with late Hugo Chavez, the self-styled leader of the ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ in Venezuela. (A 2012 Guardian thumb sketch zeroed in on Sechin as “the head of the Kremlin’s siloviki clan, made up of nationalist hardliners with a security or military background.”)
At any rate, between 2014 and 2018, Rosneft had advanced a loan of $6.5 billion in loans to Chavez to help Venezuela tide over the economic difficulties due to the US’ hostile policies. Venezuela has since mostly paid back the Russian loan in oil deliveries.
Rosneft was marketing between half and two-thirds of Venezuela’s oil and Rosneft Trading SA was Venezuela’s sole supplier of gasoline. The business now will be handled by the unnamed Kremlin company. Evidently, this is a strategic move which signals Russia’s determination to retain its commanding presence in Venezuela’s oil sector.
This has implications for the world oil market, since Venezuela’s proven oil reserves — 300 billion barrels as of 2016 — accounts for over 18 percent of proven oil reserves all over the world and ranks the country as No 1 in the world.
At a time when the OPEC is mutating and the OPEC+ is caught up in the maelstrom of the sharp fall in oil prices due to coronavirus, the future of world oil market has become highly volatile and uncertain. It is already having a deleterious impact on the US shale industry which cannot survive unless oil sells at $45-50 per barrel. But oil prices are certain to go up in the coming years and Venezuela is destined to be a big presence in the world oil market in the long term.
Suffice to say, the Kremlin is playing the long game, while strengthening in the process in immediate terms the Maduro government’s capacity to withstand the US pressure and to retain its strategic autonomy.
France, Czechs, & Other US Allies Exit Iraq Over COVID-19 Fears
By Tyler Durden – Zero Hedge – 03/27/2020
The United States has shown itself willing to both keep up its ‘maximum pressure’ campaign on Iran and its proxies while riding roughshod over Iraqi sovereignty by remaining in the country even as Baghdad leaders and the broader population demand a final exit.
But in another sign Europe is ready to divorce itself from US aims in the region, France has abruptly withdrawn its forces from the country after being there for five years. Interestingly the prime reason given was troop safety concerns over the coronavirus outbreak, but we imagine European leaders likely now see an opportunity to make a swift and easy exit without provoking the ire of their US counterparts.
International correspondents say this includes French withdrawal from six bases, with a small contingent of about 100 troops remaining in the country. The Czech Ministry of Defense also announced the exit of its forces Wednesday, which followed a large contingent of British forces leaving last week, also on fears of coronavirus exposure during the mission.
“British, French, Australian and Czech troops who were coaching Iraqi counterparts were being temporarily sent home as Baghdad had put a hold on training operations to prevent the spread of COVID-19,” reports the AFP this week.
All had been there to support coalition anti-ISIL operations led by Washington. But as the US mission to defeat the Islamic State has lately become less relevant given the demise of the terror group, Washington’s focus became Iranian influence inside Iraq – far beyond the original mission scope.
The US itself had been reportedly drawing down from certain bases, but is not expected to ultimately depart given the current high state of tensions with Iran-backed militias in the country.
But Iran and Iraq’s ‘counter-pressure’ campaign is only set to continue, as on Thursday two rockets slammed into the Iraqi capital’s high-security Green Zone early in the morning, in an incident that’s become almost a monthly occurrence. There were no reports of injuries.
Middle East regional correspondent and analyst Elijah Magnier observes of the rapid draw down: “Coronavirus is offering an opportunity for the world to detach itself from US dominance and reshuffle alliances.”
Indeed this will likely be the outcome in geopolitical hot spots and even economies around the globe.
Coronavirus: the Reactionaries from USA
By Viktor Mikhin – New Eastern Outlook – 29.03.2020
Coronavirus is spreading to more and more countries and leaving an increasing number of deaths in its wake. It is about time experts and the common men asked legitimate questions: “Where did this deadly virus come from, in what laboratories was it created, and who is behind the pandemic?”. We will try to answer them as objectively as possible.
The first country where the novel coronavirus was detected and that actively began to stop its spread was China. When residents of the city of Wuhan began to get infected and die, the Chinese authorities warned the global community about the danger and started its full-on battle against the virus.
Many nations in the world immediately offered to help China and quickly began working on the cure for COVID-19.
But what did the current U.S. administration do in the wake of the outbreak? Some U.S. media outlets started accusing China of unleashing the virus. A number of articles followed pointing to China as the origin of the virus. The author was left with the impression that either these journalists had witnessed its creation or they had been carefully instructed as to what to write. A seafood market in Wuhan was also mentioned as the source of the virus. There were also stories suggesting that the unexpected appearance of the novel coronavirus hinted at it being man-made, and that people could have used the theory the virus had come from animals to hide the true nature of its origins.
People who think they are intelligent and astute know for sure that only thieves and fraudsters make the biggest noise as they flee from those who they have stolen from or deceived. And this is exactly what some U.S. conspiracy theorists did, out of sheer stupidity, as they do not care about being objective and, instead, only strive for publicity and wider reach. Then, in the author’s opinion, more serious analytical articles were published insinuating that the new virus was created by biologists from the military and originated in U.S. laboratories.
In short, they said that as a result of experiments, the coronavirus genome appeared to contain “HIV virus-like insertions”. According to the biologists responsible for the research, the virus was not a product of evolution or mutation even theoretically speaking. Hence, they concluded it could have been man-made. Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding also addressed this issue by posting: “I am absolutely not saying it’s bioengineering nor am I supporting any conspiracy theories with no evidence. I’m simply saying scientists need to do more research + get more data. And finding the origin of the virus is an important research priority”. A professor of Molecular Biology in New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, Anand Ranganathan, and his colleagues published a preprint (which has not been peer-reviewed as yet) about their research on the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). They discovered a possible link between it and other similar known coronaviruses circulating in animals (such as bats and snakes), and found HIV virus-like insertions in 2019-nCoV. No other well-studied coronaviruses have such a structure. Hence, their research hints at the possibility that the virus was designed and could be used to wage biological warfare.
In light of these recent developments, it seems apt to remind our readers that a fierce, take-no-prisoners type of trade war is currently ongoing between the United States and China. And in the midst of this confrontation, as if by a wave of a magic wand, the coronavirus outbreak started in the PRC, which has already caused enormous damage to the Chinese economy and considerably weakened Beijing’s bargaining position at the negotiating table.
Even before the coronavirus pandemic, many experts reported that, recently, Washington, in contravention of international law, was actively developing biological weapons in its numerous laboratories located in the United States as well as abroad. Apparently, there are more than 200 U.S. biological laboratories worldwide: in Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Uzbekistan and Ukraine.
Incidentally, the author has come across articles published by Ukrainian media outlets claiming that local authorities have no oversight of such facilities. It seems that the situation in a number of other countries where U.S. biolabs are located is similar.
DTRA (the Defense Threat Reduction Agency), which collaborates with the Richard Lugar Center for Public Health Research in Georgia, is suspected of involvement in an incident that occurred in Chechnya in spring 2017. Locals reported seeing a drone that appeared to be spreading a white powder near Russia’s border with Georgia.
Ethnic bioweapons (biogenetic weapons), “is a type of theoretical bioweapon that aims to harm only or primarily people of specific ethnicities or genotypes”. Although there have never been any reports confirming that research on such weapons exists, documents that the author has come across show that the United States is gathering information about certain ethnic groups, first and foremost Russians and the Chinese. After all, Washington has labelled Russia and China as its main rivals recently. The author believes that the U.S. Air Force has been collecting Russian RNA (ribonucleic acid) and sinus tissue samples from a federal initiative. Apparently, information about this can be found in the Federal Procurement Data System. According to Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court biological experiments are deemed as war crimes. However, the United States is not a member of the Court and has a tendency to evade responsibility for war crimes.
From the author’s perspective, there is a hidden motive behind the coronavirus pandemic. And as some have already guessed, it is not the Great Plague of the XXI century but a highly contagious disease that appeared at just the right time. In other words, the pandemic is part of a far-reaching disinformation campaign aimed at creating panic and chaos. According to Chinese conspiracy theories, the virus appeared in Wuhan during the Military World Games, which U.S. and British servicemen took part in. The author believes that there were many agents from the CIA and MI6 who could have released the coronavirus at the time thus putting everyone’s lives at risk. Incidentally, the British could have played an important role in this mission as they have already gained similar experience by spreading biological agents from the Porton Down science park near the city of Salisbury. The poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia lends further credence to the author’s theory as they managed to survive the ordeal.
There are over 400,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases globally, and millions more are worried about the pandemic. What is curious to the author is that not only are the common men in a panic but so are authorities and officials who are preparing to take unprecedented quarantine measures in Russia, China, Iran and other nations that are known to choose their own path. The information war has served as a catalyst to the crisis that could have been smaller in scale but thanks to manipulation of mass consciousness, this is no longer the case.
The author thinks that the current disinformation campaign accompanying the coronavirus pandemic is the beginning of the “heist of the century”. As a result of this con, assets and savings of many nations, companies and individuals will end up in the hands of the current oligarchy, more specifically hundreds of the richest and most powerful families. The substantial portion of global wealth they already own will only increase as the rich always want more. From the author’s point of view, the United States is accustomed to robbing other countries and people of their wealth, and their allies are no exception, take Italy for example.